 the Trans Advocacy Collective. It's been several months in the coming and working with Nikki Martinez, who's a member of Fulls Fury, and gathering this amazing cohort. So I'm gonna pass to them, who's gonna present their findings and share a little bit about their work. Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here today. We are the Trans and Gendered on Conforming Advocacy Collective, or TAC for short, T-A-C. We are a collection of individuals that are working in the performing arts and all have relationships to transness as identity and also as artistry. My name is Chris Steele. I am a trans non-binary FEM performer and producer. I use they, them pronouns, and I am currently living in occupied Ramaytush Ohlone Land, colonially known as San Francisco. Hi, everyone. My name is Jessie Annette Cohen, and I'm going by Jess, and I use they, them pronouns. I am on the Ramaytush Ohlone Lands, colonially known as San Francisco. Hi, all here in Becquia, they, them director and dramaturg in the area focused on new works and living playwrights. And I am currently residing on occupied Chumash land. Hi, all. My name is Niki Martinez. I go by they, them pronouns. I identify as being a transgender fluid FEM boy. And I am a writer and performing artists here in the Bay Area. And I'm also on unoccupied Muwekma land in San Jose. Yeah, at least other Niki. Hi, everybody. Good morning, Niki Manez here. I use they, she, she, pronoun. I am a non-binary FEM Filipino artist, I'm mostly a director and someone who works in casting in this area. And I'm calling in from Yalamu, which is colonially known as San Francisco, on the unceded land of the Ramaytush speaking Ohlone people. Thank you all for being here today. We're going to give you just a little tiny introduction as to who we are, how we came together, and how we moved into this amazing relationship with Fools Fury, who thank you so much for giving us space and for hosting us today and for continually seeking to disrupt the norms of what we traditionally think of as a theater system. We've all been working together in some form or rather, I think across the theater sphere in the Bay Area for quite a while. And I think personally, my experience during the COVID lockdowns was a lot of thinking. I don't know that I could speak for the rest of my team, so speak for myself. Was a lot of thinking about the relationship that I had had for the past half a decade with theater in the Bay Area. And throughout my life with theater is a form of production and as a model of working. And a lot of the work that we have done is inspired by, as always, the groundbreaking work of activists of color and trans activists of color that have led the way before us. And seeing the incredible work done in part by the BIPOC living document, but that is not the only source of inspiration where we're deeply indebted to the groundbreaking earth-shaking work that was done by that really democratic process. And as trans artists in an area that has always been inspired by and deeply fused with transness, living in the Bay Area, you are so close to so much innovation, specifically in trans and queer theater history. It's hard to not wonder how we're making progress in that area. And so I began reaching out to some people wondering if there was more work to be done and if maybe more minds were better working together and sort of collaborating to find out ways that we can continue to get trans people employed, to bring trans people into meaningful relationships with the arts and to continue to represent the stories of trans people on our stages. And that, I think, is when we first began meeting. But of course, everything is very nebulous until you can begin with a working structure. So I'm gonna pass it on to Niki to talk about how we sort of sought out that working structure and are continuing that work forward with Fulls Fury. Yeah, I'm also gonna pass it to Jess afterwards. But I started working with Fulls Fury in 2020 and during that time, obviously COVID struck the pandemic and everything was sort of crazy in personal life as well as like work life. And so when Kieran and Chris approached me about this group that they were forming, I was really excited about it. That was like one of the group meetings that I looked forward to because it was amongst my peers. And at that time, I was working with Fulls Fury in a contract basis and they offered me this opportunity to apply for a grant. And I thought this group needed a grant to start this amazing work that we began. And so once I applied for the grant, I figured out that I got it and it was really exciting. So Jess, do you want anything to add after that? Sure, yeah. Yeah, once Niki got the grant for us, I think that really kicked us into gear. Yeah, we were talking of like, oh, what is this organizational structure like? How do we want to move forward? What do we want to be? What is our purpose? Existential questions keep popping up. And I think this grant really allowed us to focus in on what, on something and coming together with Fulls Fury with this digital convening really gave us something to work towards. Because I think before it was more like inner heads and just kind of like, what do we want the world to be? And now with the grant, it felt more solid and concrete and like we were actually working towards something. Yeah, and I think we're all just really grateful to this grant that allowed us to be able to actually dedicate time and resources to this problem that we've all experienced in different ways and different facets. And then I came on board with Fulls Fury as the production manager for this conference. And so grateful to be able to be a part of that backstage and production side. I've worked as a production manager, producer, casting, most primarily admin for theater organizations across the Bay Area. And it was wonderful to be able to come in front on the production side and then also working on our little cohort on the side, pulling those two worlds together. Which also I think really goes to speak to the power of organizations of like, we are currently just a cohort of individuals. We have no official organization structure, but through the infrastructure that Fulls Fury has, we were able to work with them to pull this together. And so it kind of speaks to, without that organizational structure, it's a lot harder to make progress in the industry, which is also an organizational structure. With that, yeah, how do we wanna move forward? So I was going to talk about basically like what we did with the grant. So what we decided to do because we were such a cohort and we talked so much about like what we wanted to see in the Bay Area theater scene in regards of like respecting us as trans and queer individuals. We wanted to hear from a bigger audience from our community. And so with Fulls Fury, we were able to create a Google form, which I would like to share with many of you so you could also fill it out because this is an ongoing process that we would like to work on to get some individual testimonies about what their experiences were in working with theater organizations as being TGNC and queer individuals. And so I want to share basically the results that we have so far. Know that this work is not done. We want to continue this work after build. So I'll be sharing the individual testimonies and then Karen is going to share a little bit of our findings around organizational survey that we sent out. So let me share my screen. Perfect. So this is our findings for the individual testimony. Basically, we released the Google form in late August hoping to generate personal stories from our TGNC or transgender, nonconforming and queer artists community and their experiences being involved with arts organizations, like I said before. And when we published and released it into the world we had very few interactions. Outreach was really hard just because we were combating with the Delta variant that came. Also this weird fight between theater coming back and not coming back and what does it mean to be in a hybrid world where we're working or not working? And also just to know that all of us involved were juggling several jobs and responsibilities. So we tried our best in order to get as many people to fill out the survey. And that's why we want to share it with you in the chat in order to get more responses to get a bigger pool. But from the few responses that we've had we understood that there were common negative experiences. Some of these were misgendering, not having bathroom access that were gender neutral and then also being typecasted specifically for non-binary and gender nonconforming folks to be forced to considered only for masculine presenting characters or female presenting characters depending on how they pass. And this idea of passing is a social construct that needs to die essentially. And just so everyone knows, I've also been very typecast and experienced this feeling especially when I came out after I graduated college everybody just saw that like, oh, your trans mask that's put you in there. And I'm like, not really gender fluid. So I like being a pretty princess sometimes too, guys. So I think a lot of non-binary folks have that feeling of just like, okay, well, I don't wanna be pigeonholed and I could be so versatile, why don't you use me more? So that's a lot of the common negative experiences and some of the positive experiences which is like on the flip side, a lot of people have expressed that drag spaces are very accepting of a person's androgyny. Being queer and being able to portray queer characters in an LGBTQ theater environment is something extremely rewarding. Getting called back during auditions for multiple roles of multiple genders. This really combats the idea of typecasting. And then also having accessible bathrooms or the organization changing their bathrooms with the simple paper sign to make them gender neutral. Just because we know a lot of these buildings, especially in San Francisco and Oakland, they're really old and they were not made with the idea of having gender neutralness then but having simple signs. I know Sean Dorsey Dance does this where they just put up a sign that says this bathroom has a urinal and this one doesn't so you could use whichever. So having that being a combative source makes a huge difference for being a trans individual. So some of the questions that we asked is like what about the current theater systems that make you feel excluded as well as like auditions specifically? So a lot of the responses that we received commonly were that companies are using the same actors over and over again. They're using people who they're comfortable with and not providing opportunities for others. A lot of people express that they stopped auditioning because of the lack of opportunities and accessibility. And also this issue of the lack of diverse storytelling, casting and bodies that they see on stage. There's this sort of stereotypical thought of like anybody who's an actor needs to be white passing, thin and a very gendered rule because a lot of pieces in theater that are being produced, that's what they want. And so we need sort of a more diverse pool of stories and there are there is just needing these theaters to pick those in order for others to have those opportunities. Another idea of like the lack of diverse storytelling, it's hard to find older 50 plus year old TGNC characters portrayed on stage, a lot of trans or queer narrative is very young or they're just coming out and there's not that many that are just like older and just living life. Understanding that a lot of trans individuals have a life expectancy of 30 years old just because of the violence that we experience either through suicide, murders or harassment. But it is important to see our trans elders live life and to be seen on stage to know that we could live past 30. And again, there's a lack of pronoun usage and also the constant gendered language whether it be on audition forms, contracts or surveys just having a very gender neutral language goes a long way but this is what we're up against and this is constantly happening. And this question is, how does the production process make you feel excluded? Again, lack of respect of pronoun usage, gendered language and also being dead named because of financial forms and then having more than just one person handling payments knowing a person's dead name. If you don't know what a dead name is it's basically a person who is trans and is born with a name that they don't like and would like to be called something else. For example, I was born Nicole but I loved being called Nikki. Also my family calls me Nikki and I always thought my name was Nikki. So I go by Nikki. Nicole doesn't really bother me but for a lot of trans people their dead names do bother them a lot and it's really important to have those dead names protected especially for those in the production that may not respect trans people or not respect their choice of name and pronoun use and it's extremely disrespectful and it's often very harmful. So this process of like having somebody who needs to deal with financial processes we know that the government needs people's legal names but having one person dedicated to that responsibility I think is important but obviously it doesn't happen a lot because a lot of people complained about it. Next we asked how can organizations make you feel safer? Again, to give respect to trans, gender and non-conforming queer individuals with use of pronouns with intros like we showed today making bathrooms gender neutral and address issues immediately and take accountability for mistakes made. So like the examples that we've already given of misgendering or dead naming saying oops, I'm sorry I meant this correcting it immediately causes more I think acceptance of the mistake rather than just ignoring it because that causes more harm. So really understanding that accountability goes a long way for a lot of people. And one of the last questions is like how does productions or organizations protect you during audience interactions? And a lot of people complained about this that they have rarely trained moderators leading these interactions causing the following issues. So there's a constant misgendering of an actor there's comments from audience members that cause harm and appropriate questions about transgender non-conforming individuals and their queer bodies and then unnecessary emotional labor. The unnecessary emotional labor really falls on the shoulders of the trans and queer individuals that are asked to be in these Q and A's especially if they're like queer oriented shows and a lot of people that are hired are either cisgendered straight people that have no idea what they're talking about. So usually those questions that involved around queerness or transness get put on the shoulders of those that are queer and trans and it could be very emotionally damaging it could be triggering. And it's hard because you have to put on a straight face when you're in these Q and A's and talk backs so you can't show that you're upset or if you do a lot of these theaters don't really understand. So really needing that trained moderator is extremely important during these talk backs. And then what about the current theater systems make you feel included? So this is sort of like a positive take. So active efforts for inclusivity. Again, casting calls that specify trans gender nonconforming folks that are encouraged to audition that's something that's really encouraging nongendered language on your audition forms, gender inclusive bathrooms, pronouns being shared in introductions and having them listed in email signatures especially if you're not doing anything verbal or since COVID happened, the digital world is so important that emails show you as like your first introduction to things many of the times. Understanding private information example like a dead name will be only used for payment purposes and no more than the finance team or person processing payments will know. And then also this important factor having an intimacy director onsite or cultural consultant. This is something that is not new. It's been happening and I think more theaters should have a budget in order to hire these very important people because anytime anybody is becoming intimate with another person, whether it be platonically or just like really intimate or even fighting having somebody that knows the safety protocols there and understands the emotional and physical labor that it could trigger somebody is really important. And then also having a cultural consultant could act like an HR for theater basically, being able to go to that person and be like, hey, so this actor misgendered me and I felt really uncomfortable because nobody really corrected them and I don't feel comfortable correcting them because I'm the only queer person then that intimacy or the cultural consultant could go in and step in and like talk about it with the whole cast and crew. So understanding that those two roles are extremely important in theater and people are asking for it. So what do you consider before agreeing on a job at an organization as a transgender non-conforming individual, a lot of people said that they asked friends or colleagues that they worked with in an organization that they're considering, they asked the questions, do I feel like these people respect my identity? Do I feel safe? And also the question, what is the organization's history of casting transgender non-conforming and queer individuals? If there's less than a lot of people won't go. If this is their first time, that's when a lot of harm happens. And so these questions are really important and oftentimes like I ask these questions for myself before I go in to a theater organization before I work with them. So know that if you're feeling these feelings, you're not alone. And in summation, so the transgender non-conforming queer artist community in the Bay Area currently is looking for acceptance, respect and opportunities from theater organizations. There is a need for policy and culture change to reflect this call to action. Obviously as you saw in many of the answers that have been shared, there is a constant theme of misgendering, no access and no safe space to sort of like address harm. And so I think those are like the main three things that we need to change in a theater organization. But again, those are what our findings are so far but we would love more information so we could add to these findings and sort of create a list of like what is really needed for our theater organizations to understand the safety that is needed for trans and queer bodies. So yeah, I just wanna thank everybody for listening to like my section and I'm gonna pass it to Kieran who is going to talk about theater organizations and their survey results. So I'm just gonna stop share really quick and then change my slides. So we wanted to make sure that we were getting on both sides of this equation because we know that there are probably competing perceptions among the industry among the TGNC arts workers, perceptions of the companies and the culture here and the company's perceptions of themselves and how they're doing in this aspect. So we wanted to be able to get information from both sides. So we also did a survey by invitation to theater organizations. And once this is up, I will start talking about some of the results but fantastic, thank you. So first I just wanna go through how we laid out the survey. Okay, if you could go forward, thank you. So first we just did basic information. We wanted to get who was responding to the survey themselves. We wanted to know who at the organization was the person filling this out, what their job title was and obviously the name of the organization. And then we wanted to get general information about the organization itself so that we could look at different strata also. So we wanted to get the budget, we wanted to get how many years each organization has been operating, how many staff they have, how many contractors they employ each year and how many volunteers they employ each year. And then we wanted to get an overview of the perceptions of themselves, of their inclusivity of TGNC individuals. And we wanted to ask whether or not just A, do they consider themselves a TGNC inclusive theater? We wanted to ask what steps they've taken in the past five years to promote that inclusivity or to grow these relationships. We wanted to ask how many performers they have had who are TGNC on stage in the last five years, how many characters they've had on stage, how many offstage production workers they've had and how many admin production workers they've had all within the last five years because we wanted to get a snapshot of how companies have been trying to adapt their practices recently. So we reached out via email, we looked at the directory of theater Bay Area registered organizations and looking for that list, we did choose to narrow down a little bit. We chose not to ask organizations that primarily do education or primarily have children as performers. We chose not to ask dance focused organizations largely at this moment because we as a group do not feel as strong in our network in the dance world. We would at some point love to expand this to them but at this point we don't feel like we have that capacity. And then we also chose not to ask booking venues. So like Silicon Valley Center for the Arts, things that largely are bringing in other shows and are booking other people's work in their spaces rather than producing themselves. So that took out SHN, that took out Broadway San Jose, a lot of the things that are just booking people. We did receive a somewhat unsatisfactory response rate. We sent out over 90 invitations and we received 21 responses. And a handful of companies less than 10 reached out to us to say, hey, we're super swamped right now, we'll get to this. We just won't be able to do it before October, which is fine. We're going to keep sending invitations, we're going to follow up, we're going to ask people. But with such a small sample size we are not fully comfortable yet drawing hard conclusions from the data. However, at this time we want to present some of the findings we have so far and our assumptions based on that and how we are going to be moving forward with this. So very first thing we asked was organizational budget, just quick overview, so we can get an idea of who we're looking at. We only had one respondent so far in the 2.5 million to 5 million budget range. But other than that, we had a pretty even spread. And then looking at how many years each organization has been operating, we got largely operations or organizations that have been operating for more than 15 years. And we're hoping we can get much broader range as we expand our data set. So here's the obvious question that people were very reactive to, was do you consider your organization to be trans and gender non-conforming inclusive, which everyone who responded does? And what this tells us is that all of these companies want to be TGNC inclusive. So, and that's why we have come together as a group because we want to be able to help these organizations. We want to be able to see where they are, meet them where they are, see where the arts workers in the industry are and hope that we can find some reconciliation here. So looking at how many TGNC performers have appeared in programming over the last five years, again, when we have more data, we'll want to break this down a little bit more into looking at what size of budget. Also has different categories, how many performers, how many characters. But right now with just the 21 responses we had, I only felt comfortable showing a broad overview. And so as we can see very, very happily, none of the companies surveyed or that responded have not hired any TGNC performers in the past five years, which is a great positive. And again, small sample size, I'm sure it'll spread more, or I assume I should say that it will spread more as we get more responses, but it does seem like we kind of have a number of responses in all of the categories. Mostly people have hired one to three performers in the last five years, but you can see that there is a pretty even spread across the four to seven, eight to 10, and more than 10 category also. Moving forward, looking at how many TGNC characters have appeared in their programming. So now among these 21 companies that responded, we can see although all of them hired at least one TGNC performer, four of them have not had a TGNC character in five years of programming. But a few of them have had more than 10. So some of them have had, and some of these are specifically queer organizations. There's a lot of variables here that this data is not capturing because this is a very generalized snapshot that we're showing at the moment, but it is also showing that the trend is for less here. The trend is that most companies are hiring one to three, or are showing one to three trans characters in their programming over five years. Looking at offstage capacity, so this could be directors, designers, stage managers, anyone who's working on the production side, but not performing in front of an audience. The spread is trends toward the lower end also. We have less companies that have not hired any and more that have hired four to seven, but still, again, not entirely comfortable drawing hard conclusions from such a small data set. And then administrative, this is where we also had a question about staff size, and when we have a bigger data set, we will compare more closely staff size versus number of TGNC administrative workers hired. But this is where we are right now with most of the organizations having hired one to three TGNC admin workers in the past five years and the none having hired more than seven. So our initial observations, again, not drawing hard conclusions from this data, but from what we've seen and as the organizations have larger budgets, we've noticed those are the ones that have tended to hire less TGNC workers. The more years they've been in operation also has had a trend of they've hired less within the last five years, but the exciting thing, as we saw with that first, the all blue pie chart, all of them really want to be TGNC inclusive. They perceive themselves as inclusive and they want to get there. And so what I would say to all of these companies and the ones who have yet to fill out the survey is that's why we're here, please hire us. We are this organization, this collective, is here to help you shift your practices by gathering data from both the organizations and the individual arts workers to see what the differences are, see where we are not seeing eye to eye and see how we can equalize these visions of our industry. I believe that's the end of my presentation about last slide, Nikki. Yeah, great. Thank you. So I'm going to hand it off now to Chris and Nikki to talk about some of our next steps. Great. Hi. Thank you both so much for presenting some of our basic findings as we begin our reach. And if we can at some point get those surveys posted in the chat, you can also find them on the Fool's Fury website. Like both of you have said, this is ongoing work as all social justice work is. It is a process. There is not an end point. And so collecting more and more data and information from you will really help us to continue to be able to advocate more broadly for community needs. We're going to talk about next steps. There was a great question that came up early in our broadcast about how can people help? What can companies be doing? What are we asking for? And I think we know personally what we would ask for ourselves but collecting that information helps us to be able to expand the things that we would be asking for. One of our next steps will be working with theater Bay Area directly to hopefully be able to host some round table rooms for transgender non-conforming artists to be able to speak together in an identity space about the things that we want and things that we need so we can continue to advocate for those things as well as creating a presentation of more public recommendations. But on a very basic level in terms of recommendations and I will speak with as much tact as I possibly can, there is a need in the theater industry for the casting system to change. We are consistently across the board both for BIPOC and trans individuals talking about how the system of casting wherein the theater holds all the power and imagines the role that you would best expect based on your appearance or your voice is not serving anyone to the best of our abilities. And there needs to be a shift in the industry towards consent-based casting which means that instead of viewing any artist, performer, creator, person that you're going to hire is just another cog that you're fitting into a larger picture machine. You need to be building consensual relationships with artists and that includes in an area that historically is a trans-led and empowered artistic industry trans people. If your organization is not asking trans people and doing the legwork of saying what are the roles you were interested in playing? Which is the question you can ask any actor in an audition to get to know them. What is it that makes you interested in this play? What is it that makes you interested in that role? Allow us room for performers to be able to speak for themselves and build a greater consensual system so that together you're working towards casting system that is affirming for them and exciting for you because in my personal experience artists will bring their best to the work when they feel empowered and safe to do so. More tangibly hiring trans people. There are certain theater companies in the Bay that are doing a pretty remarkable job of making tangible promises about hiring queer and trans people and we want to see more companies committing to that and saying we are going to make sure that we are hiring trans people. We're going to be in a category that is not zero trans characters any year. We're going to be in a category that's not zero trans actors in a year and that includes hiring people into administrative work. So often we see both in this work and in the field for BIPOC advocacy that there is a chicken or the egg situation. If you cannot give someone a job you're going to have less people in that field able to be able to take jobs in the future. And this recently came up when talking about a show that was being rebroadcast that had some transphobic elements to it. Our past work and whether we continue to foster new trans talent for the future will have a tangible ripple effect on the next year, five years, 10 years down the line. So if we want to see trans people not only being able to survive but being able to survive in the arts it's crucial that your organization and the organizations that you work with hire trans people at the very basic level. Those are some tangible next steps that are based on this information but again, the more information we can collect the more we are able to advocate. And just like with trans identities it's not just finding a way to grammatically respect a pronoun. It's about reconceiving the way your system of gender works and that's what we're asking for, for casting. Nikki, I'm gonna pass it on to you for more. Oh man, I mean, that was so full and so beautiful Chris, so thank you so much for that. I think for us as a team I wanna reach back a little bit to when we first got together prior to the survey, prior to the grant and our partnership with Full Theory in terms of like dreaming about the world that we wanna create together as a collective. So I'm recalling things like this establishment of not only holding ourselves as a team to establish those practices of policies that cultural change that we wanna see but holding institutions accountable for that change and for that growth and being able to offer a lens of be centering those institutions in the work that needs to be done. I think to Karen's point earlier giving aid in that growing but also being able to point and see and critique lovingly when those actions aren't fulfilled in a good way. I think also something, I mean personally it's something that someone who works in casting you know giving transgender non-conforming artists toolkit in order to approach organizations in a way that feels they can get to them when or if it happens that they don't have like connections with those institutions with those casting people with other folks because we're not just talking about actors or performers, we're also talking about crew we're talking about designers and how they even though they're not visually seen very often by the audiences who experience the work and assemble for these performances they're still inherently a part of the storytelling and that their identities the fullness of themselves are as important to what they are creating as the performance that we see on our stages as well. I think also being able to create a TGNC network of artists who can not only arm themselves with the toolkit that we wanna provide when they are approaching organizations they may or may not have relationships with but also to connect with each other and be seen and heard in that way to be in community with each other in a profession and industry and a culture that is often very isolating in the way that we are continuing to you know, book the next gig, look for a new story to tell and to fit in repeating myself the fullness of ourselves in this work and be able to demand that our fullness be recognized as artists is a really important thing I think is a core for us as a collective. And I mean, Chris has a little more know-how for this than I do but in just the past few months that we as a collective have been publicizing and speaking our truth and letting people know that we're here or around and we're doing the work other theater companies have noticed especially in this area and they have responded they have been in communication and there are a lot of learnings that still need to be done as a very, even in the nonprofit sector very capitalist centered culture in the way that we are not only affirming but empowering the artists to stories that we want to tell or want to support and that we're not just, you know doing this for audience we need to get. It is to do performing arts is community action it is communication. The active assembly is such a radical thing in these times and especially with the distance that we felt between each other in the past year and a half, two years to be able to connect in this way so that we connect better when we're in person and things feel unshuttered the world opens back up again and we can all live in that in a quick way. I think it's been a really beautiful experience with this team, I think I loved. That's one reason why we focused on locality because we cannot make recommendations for all the parts of the world that we don't know but we can speak to the people that are with us in the place that we call home and create community and we can work together here to make tangible changes that then could have ripple effects as they spread. And so I know that that is one of our biggest goals here is if you are a theater that said you are interested in being trans inclusive and you have questions about how to do that hire someone on this team to help talk with you about the things that need to change take some of that money that we often get from the government and spend it on community good so that we can continue to deepen our relationship as nonprofit sectors and even for profit with the community in which we are creating art. Yeah, I think at this point we'd love to open up to some questions from the audience we've been gathering them backstage throughout our presentation. And I think Chris also mentioned one of the very first questions we got was what do we crave from our allies? And I think for me I would like to just put out there that our identities are not static that a person that maybe identifies currently as a cisgender person maybe in the future no longer identifies that way. And I think an important part of being an ally is recognizing that at any time our identities could shift pronouns could change the name we want to use could change and so assuming that things are the same is something that we need to look at at changing that assumption. Personally, I've gone through several iterations of the name that I want to be used or the pronoun I want to be I want to use even over the last year or two years. And so that process is kind of a burden on the queer people to constantly come out. And if you don't have the process of checking in with your pronouns checking in with your name whatever even if you're like, oh we've all met together before there's no new people here someone identity could have shifted they could be using a different name they could be using a different pronoun. And so just recognizing that this could shift and these need to be open conversations not just a one-time thing when you're hired but continually checking in on how people want to be addressed. And I think we're starting to get some more questions. I'm going to have to really address that question also just to read out my question first. What do we crave from allies? What can we really, really how can we really, really help your work thrive? What does no one ever ask slash do and do you need to see? So I think one thing that I would ask of people who are trying to be allies to this work is that we cannot be the only ones calling in companies when they make mistakes. I think sadly enough it is much more easy to dismiss someone when they are standing up for themselves than to dismiss someone who is standing up for someone else. And so I'm thinking of some recent examples that I'm not going to go into. But there are instances where the TGNC community or TGNC arts workers have called out an issue and a company has responded in a way that is incredibly dismissive and viewing people who are complaining or calling out issues as vindictive or just upset that they're not the person in the room. And I think that it is incredibly helpful to have people who are not necessarily of those identities in those conversations as well helping out, calling up the issues that are being addressed here. So that would be I think point A for me. And there are simple tangible like emotional labor things that you can do if you hear someone being misgendered even when you're not in the room, stop it. Interrupt the harm. And that has always been a powerful technique of allies in any act as in field is if you see harm happening and you are not the person at risk for that harm you have power in that moment to be able to step in and interrupt that harm and say, hey maybe not that especially if you have relationships with these institutions we have learned through psychology through many, many studies that people are more likely to listen to someone that they have a relationship with than they don't. So if you are working with these institutions already and you see trans people not coming through the door you can begin that hard conversation with the artistic director whose name you personally know that a trans person who's coming into the audition may not. And to go down the list of like questions that we have so we have a question from Dr. Jill. Can dramaturgs get trained in these forms of awareness since we often serve as moderators? I would say you can. Yes, certainly. I think also higher TGNC dramaturgs. Or assistant dramaturgs. Like I think that's right, how are people supposed to get into the field if there's no way for them to be able to get practical experience? So in Dr. Jill's case if you are not trans yourself but you know you have a project that you're assigned to that has trans people coming up can you hire an assistant dramaturg who is trans to work with you on that project? But also to directly answer the question yes you can get trained in these there are trans competency workshops there are resources that can help you be more prepared for these conversations and so I would encourage anyone who is wanting to get more awareness there if you don't know where to look reach out to one of us and we can direct you to some resources. And Nikki, I remember us originally in the steps talking about how we were possibly gonna be looking at building databases or collecting people's information but as someone who works in casting do you find yourself also being asked questions about artistic team when there are holes that need filling and is there a way that we can better support the resource pool for artistic teams because I think very often we do focus on artists and actors and performers but we don't always focus on the people behind the scenes in terms of databaseing. I think in the slow progress that we're making in my experience I think it's the corning the trust building that happens when you engage with a PG&C artist and the way that they're able to speak to that experience and that theater company, those producers to the rest of their community and might others in. I think that relationship building really matters it's not just about hiring somebody for a job it's like respecting their humanity and when that is practice, when that is seen it echoes out. So for me in terms of casting folks and then hiring, casting, hiring artists it's really about the way that you walk the walk in the way that you're able to practice that without being, what's the term for it virtue signaling about it. And especially in the way that we're talking about all this intersection very often that engaging people's interests even beyond like the roles they see themselves in is creating more opportunities for more PG&C artists. I'd also add that anyone in the theater that you work for can be trained in these conversations like it's thinking of companies that don't have the budget to bring on a dramaturg then who's there advocating for these people? It's the director or the stage manager it's the backstage crew that in my experience as a stage manager and production manager gets overlooked in these things but we can be powerful advocates for the cast that feels like they have no power. If you're a crew member that has been working for a theater for 10 years on all of the different shows you have power that these trans people these actors don't have that don't have an existing relationship with these organizations. So anyone can be an ally and take these steps. And to that point I just love to shout out if you all don't know about Hullaback they're beautiful non-profits who provide free to sliding scale online resources in terms of de-escalation training, advocacy and allyship. If you feel like hopping on another Zoom they're available and they're accessible and they're doing fantastic work nationally. Another question this is more pointed to the company survey Fuse Theater asks was the inclusive question for companies only yes and no and Emily added to that question more nuanced options could force them to actually dig into their intent versus reality. Yeah so the way the question was for oh sorry Chris do you want to go ahead? Nope, nope you take it. The way the question was phrased was do you consider your organization to be TG and C inclusive? And yes they had the answers yes or no. An area in the survey that we are not sharing publicly because we have a confidentiality agreement with the organizations that have filled this out with us is what practices for they put into place in the last five years. So that's also something that they are answering in long form. That's not something we'll be sharing publicly because we are keeping the company's confidential from their individual responses. But yeah we do have a place in the survey for them to do that. And also something we have in the individual survey is we ask individual arts workers filling it out what companies locally do they consider to be TG and C inclusive? That's again not something we'll be sharing publicly in our results but that will be interesting for us to compare of the companies that do consider themselves inclusive which ones did not show up in the perception of the workers as TG and C inclusive. And those are things that possibly we would share individual results with the organizations if they consult with us but would not be open just for public viewing. And again the individual survey is for trans and gender nonconforming artists. So it is not necessary to ask them if they are inclusive of trans and gender nonconforming artists as they are those artists but asking them what their perceptions of those companies are. And I hear I believe it was Emily's addendum about more options and nuance in the word but I think that as an advocacy group the baseline that we are seeking to establish is are you interested in doing the work to have trans and gender nonconforming artists in your organization in any way shape or form? And that basic very fundamental foundation we can build upon but until we have that baseline asked you don't actually know whether putting in more nuance or effort is even actually worth it to yield anything. So I do think we are at a point where like asking these what seem to be very surface level questions are actually very tangible. Do you want trans and gender nonconforming artists to work with you? And that is a very basic statement. And if you don't, thank you for letting me know and I won't show up for the audition so that I don't feel like I'm wasting my time and yours. But if you do then we can start assessing well, are you doing what you want to be doing? Exactly. Thank you, Chris. We have another question from Gavin. It's a two-part question. On the survey to pass along one any guidance or rubric for institution in terms of considering themselves inclusive like beyond just wanting or declaring and then part two any check or relative comparison to external perceptions of the orgs imagined at any point, any way to measure disparity or synchronicity, I said that right, of self-perception with objective experience. Well, I think we just answered part B of that. Yeah, exactly. But just the part one. Yeah. So I mean, in terms of guidance or rubric a lot of the things that Nikki shared during their presentation of things that individual arts workers are consistently bumping up against definitely use those as guidelines. But again, this is why our collective exists. We are here to get these perceptions so that we can shift into a consultancy role and work with companies on shifting their practices. So hire us. Which is my guidance. Well, and as trans artists with a lot of experience across the board for us in the field, I can say that this panel is pretty experienced in creating this kind of working in the Bay Area and beyond. We already have personal experiences that we can speak upon but the reason we did these surveys was to expand upon that personal service but put money in trans people's pockets to tell you what they need is like the very basic, most basic thing that we can do. And if it's not hiring us, hire a trans person to be on your team regularly because then you have someone who is there working with you who already has that perspective in the room. And I find that many times that I am bumping into an organization and as we said in the individual survey which Nikki went over, having to do extra emotional labor is when I'm in a role that is not a consultancy role and not an administrative role in an organization. I'm just there as a participating artist. And yet I'm being asked because of the nature of my existence to do extra administrative or organizational labor in teaching that organization about my existence. If you want me to do that then hire me to be a part of your administration or pay me an extra consultancy fee to consensually do that work so that you have someone there all the time that's already keeping an eye on these things. Exactly. I was just gonna add onto that of just being extremely transparent when you're hiring TGNC actors or even BIPOC actors. Like I know I've gotten that as well with just racial issues and just being a cultural consultant when I'm like, I'm supposed to be your actor. Like I don't, I didn't sign up for this. Like yes, I do ED and I contracting work on the side but you didn't hire me to do that. You hired me to be an artist. So being extremely transparent of like what the job entails and to be paying an extra fee sort of like what Chris was saying is extremely important and to bring awareness not only awareness to your organization and like your hiring techniques but also transparency with the people that you hire. Yeah, that's all I wanted to add. And just to quickly echo something that I said earlier because I think it's relevant here is that we do have a section in the organizational one asking what policies or procedures they have changed what institutional changes they have brought to make the organizations more inclusive. And so by comparing what organizations are doing to what the individual arts workers in the industry are needing for these organizations moving forward, we will be looking to build a clearer set of guidelines around this. We have another question from Dr. I put a lot of thought in activism and a silly dissertation into exploring how casting practices contribute to the invisibility of women and people with disabilities. How can all of the minorities that are affected by these practices come together to increase their visibility and our bargaining power? I think, you know, just to answer this question quickly thinking about equity in a intersectional lens is something that is necessary because intersectionality covers all minority basis. And being able to understand like how accessibility, respect and, yeah. Accessibility and respect are just needed across the board. And when you're putting into intersectionality in the forefront of your mind, I think that is the something that increases our visibility and bargaining power just to put that out there to all theater organizations. Yeah. And to add on to that, I'd also say that the most change, I think, comes by recognizing the differences in that, like, we're not all just one big minority umbrella. We each, in the intersections, fit in different ways. And so if you are a white queer person and you see harm being done to a black person of recognizing that and calling it out then and saying, oh, this is happening because of racism or racist things or like this is problematic and like calling it out and not, I think we have a tendency in our society to lump everyone together. And I think in this intersection, in this intersectional identity of being careful not to lose our intersectionality. And yes, we want to include all minorities, but all minorities face challenges differently. And so the way that we approach these very different nuances will not be the same. They may be similar, but I think it's important to call out the differences in those intersectional identities. I hear words like bargaining power and I just get excited because, again, I think that there needs to be a fundamental shift in the way that we cast and in the way that we look at theater, especially with nonprofit organizations where we have a mission and our mission is to help our community in some way. We really, we should be asking when we're in the room as artists, like, to these companies that we either know or that we're getting to know the same kind of things that we would ask during a job interview. And so often I wish companies made more space in an audition to be able to create space just to talk. You can learn something about me from me doing the monologue, yes. But I think you can also learn a bunch about me by talking to me as an artist and a human in that same context. And it might even put me at more ease to give you a better performance and a better judge of my skillset in artistry. Yeah, to that point, I'd love to doftail off that. And just encourage, again, as someone who works in casting, something I've been talking about with my coworkers, my peers, in setting up a comforting, safe environment for artists to come and audition for us, that it's a two-way interview, really sitting in the fact that these artists should, or we want to encourage the artists to come to our organization, to feel like they're also interviewing us as an organization in order for them to assure that their priorities, their needs, get met, even through the process of auditioning. And I think that's something that's very rare and really precious, especially thinking about, like, removing ourselves as artworkers from the capitalist mindset and the urgency that comes with, you know, gotta hire these roles, gotta put on this production. We've got X, Y and Z dates and goals to meet. But to really sit in that, carve out, be purposeful about carving out that time and that energy in that space for people to have that artistic agency even before they get hired, I think really enables a healthier mindset when you're collaborating and creating community between institutions and individual artists. And artists can take a look at past casting from those companies. You can look through their shows and see how they've cast. You can ask in the audition room, hey, how are you committed to casting, insert the people that you're hoping to advocate for here? You can ask them, like, have you had any trans artists working here? And you can be in the room as you work with these companies, building relationships so that you can leverage those relationships to help fight for accessibility and inclusivity for intersectional identities. I also think that something it's missing from a lot of, this is maybe intellectualizing a little bit, but missing from a lot of conversations around this is any sort of class analysis. And when you talk about bargaining power, Dr. Jill, that really excites me also because one of the things I remember from last summer during the, I'm not on Facebook anymore, but from the Facebook Wars of last summer around the living dock, where people talking about whether or not a boycott would be an effective tool. And I think the reason people are scared of that is because it is an effective tool. And I know that companies getting, everything getting shut down during COVID, no one producing kind of tempered what was, what could have happened in the immediate aftermath of the living dock with boycotts of companies that would not adapt their practices. But when those come around, I plan to participate. There are companies that I do not work at because they have not necessarily caused harm to me, but they have caused harm to people that I care about for and exploited their marginalized identities in ways that I am not comfortable with putting my labor into that organization anymore. So I think in terms of solidarity and sort of banding together as a, that's the one I'm looking for. I don't know what we're not looking for, but I think there's a lot to be said in terms of organizing mass movements of workers and a little off topic, but fun fact, all non-profit tax filings are public. So you can actually look up everyone's salaries on ProPublica. So you can also, if you think about a class analysis, bring into that the economic situation. You can look at how much each of the artistic directors is being paid, whether they're making $150 an hour equivalent while their artists are making 16 an hour. So I think having a much more economically focused analysis is helpful in this sense. And I can say. Oh, sorry. Could you just repeat that resource, please? I know that guide star, but I don't think a friend that looks before. ProPublica. Just Google the organization's name and ProPublica, tax filings. You will find it. I was going to say that I agree, Karen, and I think that there's something to the reason we ask that inclusivity question is because we have to treat a theater differently if we have some faith in that theater versus if we have no faith in that space. There are companies that I will not work with because I just have seen harm. And I do not believe that they have the interest at heart. And then there are companies that I will work with, but I don't always feel like I'm going to be represented either because of a lack of experience or understanding in the area. And I think that it's important that if there are companies that you are working with and you hear harm being spoken about those companies and you love those companies, that you take that harm seriously and then you work from within that space to change those things. We know that activism is like messy gray area work and that absolutism and purity tests always fail because we're human and we all have internalized biases and problems. But these like tools that we're talking about organizing about boycotts or about interrupting harm are pivotal in being able to help the places that we love continue to be better. And there's definitely, I think, power in withholding also. There have been times that I've been reached out by companies to ask them to help cast a TGNC character in a show to offer recommendations where I have just said like, no, I see who's directing this show. I have proven themselves not to be competent in communicating with TGNC people and I'm not going to put my community in that situation. And if someone asks you that question from the organization, I would hope that if that is your answer, they would go back to their organization and begin that conversation. And I think that's the next step is, I agree, like I think all of us have had experience being reached out to for a, hey, do you know an insert that can do an insert? And if you don't have that knowledge already as an organization, like Nikki was saying, you may want to investigate the culture of your organization because the good word does ripple and I will hear from a company if a friend of mine that has trans worked there and felt safe and I will seek out experiences with that company. If you get a response like that from Kieran, who is an incredibly intelligent individual, then maybe you should take that response back to your organization and say, hey, maybe we want to talk about this and begin to have those cultural discussions within the workplace, if that is the advocacy coming back at you. So we have two more questions. The first question is like a three-part question. It's from Gavin. And did counting TGNC roles cast coincide only with script designated characters slash identity? Or what are thoughts on making space for casting TGNC actors for a role without any specified or fixed gender identity expanding casting more broadly and inclusively by that means? Would you consider that problematic or productive? I'm very excited to answer the second part if somebody wants to take the first part. Short answer, we didn't specify that, but the way we phrase the question was how many TGNC characters. And so I am assuming slash hoping that if a company has cast a role with a TGNC actor and adapted the gender of that character within the play that they would have included that in their response. But yeah, we broke it up as performers and characters with the two questions that we asked, but did not go into more detail in the survey about how they should navigate that. That's a really good point, Gavin, thank you. And to the second part about casting TGNC artists in roles without any specified or fixed gender identity, I think I personally wanna encourage more of that because I think whether or not gender identity is specified. I think casting a TGNC artist creates nuance in the way that you're able to talk and story tell around that character. I think that matters so much for any story. And whether or not the gender identity, not gonna say whether or not gender identity matters for the character as opposed to the artist. I think the richness of their own identity can lend itself to that storytelling whether or not that's the primary part of the story. And I apologize if that's a little redundant, but I think the, again, going back to the richness of artists showing up as their whole self, inside of the character and outside when it comes to building the ensemble of a team of creative individuals. Again, both as artists and on the design and production end, that matters so, so much. Because the growth that happens when we're offered that kind of rich story to an audience is something that you can't get if you don't embrace that nuance already. So I would say that that would be, I'm not sure if I would call that productive, but I think that it leans more towards growth mindset than it is a problematic mindset, if that makes sense. I have two considerations when addressing this, and I'm curious about what the rest of the group thinks. There is a difference between asking a trans or gender fluid actor what gender spectrum of roles are you excited to perform? Because I think that's a question that we should really be asking everybody because we have seen through the history of theater since the beginning of time, people experiencing gender through character that is not their own. That has been inherent in theater since its origin. And so asking people what spectrum of roles would you be excited to play? Is a good question, especially when we're discussing gender fluidity, which I know is represented on this panel, people have different needs across their careers, across their years even. I personally have had many boy roles that I have played in the past that I'm incredibly proud of, but I'm not as interested in playing those sorts of roles anymore, because my identity and the work that I'm interested in creating has developed. So I think that's one consideration. The second consideration would be, are you taking a character where transness is not an inherent part of the character, bringing a trans person in and wanting that character to be adapted into a trans character? And I think that can happen a lot of the time when we're discussing more public domain or open copyright works and works that are like classical and adapting and bringing that transness from that person into the role, in which case I would argue that you might wanna pay that person more because you're asking them to be a consultant in their own performance. You're asking them to help you to make a certain role to represent an identity and that is beyond just the work of a performer that is like asking them to consult on the creation of a new role. And I would ask organizations to really deeply think and take the time to think about what the ramifications of having a trans person in a role and that character being trans are. Oftentimes, I will argue that it just deepens the work and brings more richness and more layers and more relatability and gives you space to reflect specifically the Bay Area and the place where we are, which hopefully our art should be doing, our community speaking to our community. But yeah, those are the two different considerations that I'm thinking of. Can anybody else like speak to either of those experiences? Yes. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, I think there are a couple of things that are popping into my mind. The first one that I've been kind of sitting on for a little bit is I really wanna encourage playwrights to include gender in your character descriptions. Even if it's like this character can be played by an actor of any gender, this character can be played only by a trans woman. I'd also encourage playwrights in your contracting process with theaters to add a clause that you have to have final approval over the casting. I think that that is an incredibly powerful tool that you as a playwright can use to make sure that the characters are not being pigeonholed. And I mean, from personal experience, I did a trans show with Kieran actually. I was the producer and they were the director and we were trying to cast a trans woman for this role and the playwright had a very specific clause where they had to approve it before we could move forward. And that really gave them the power to advocate for these characters and for these actors. And then my second thought is also that I think that the next step in trans casting is casting trans people regardless of what the gender is. I mean, the same lines of consent of like, are you okay playing these different roles? And also recognizing that transness doesn't have to be a main part of their story. Like you can just have a trans character in the background. No one has to know their trans. It doesn't have to be a main plot point. Just seeing ourselves on screen in the background is what we want. Like the story doesn't have to be about our trans identities. It could just be about people living their lives. That just happened to be trans. Can we celebrate the amazing casting for the tour of Oklahoma Revival that has an incredible trans person playing a historically cis role? And can we mention that if you are working with musicals or with composers that it would behoove you as an organization to ask those composers if transposition of keys is okay so that you can include trans people in musicals and so that you can have a broader range of who can play what? Yeah. I love that. This is also with, is this productive or, or what was the wording, productive or problematic? I have, I'm having trouble giving any sort of like monolithic answer to that. Because also I think I was really preaching the level of detail Chris was putting in their response because it is often so much on a case by case basis. If you're working on a play that is about the sexual exploitation of young girls what does it mean if you're casting a young non-binary person who may have been assigned male at birth? Like what the implications are so individual based on specific cases. And so I think in cases like this it's more important I would say to have someone with trans competency in the discussions around casting there to have those conversations with the director with the playwright, with the people who will be deciding who to bring in for those roles. And so I'm not sure that I would be comfortable giving like any sort of definitive like answer to whether that is a productive or problematic practice. Yeah. I was gonna say, I will say that like some of these are things that you can put on a basic audition form. Like beyond just asking what someone's gender is asking what roles they're comfortable playing is really easy. And building in a consent based casting model where you ask the person why do you care about this play? I know in California we are technically not allowed to ask or hire someone for their transness or for their blackness or for their queerness but you can ask them why they care about the character and assume that their relationship to that character will inform their lived experiences will inform the work. And I think that that sort of breaks past I've heard and I don't know about the rest of the panel but I've heard like sometimes pushback against like cast like we must cast trans people as trans people or we must cast queer people in queer roles. The idea that's like well anybody can do anything arguably sure but only once everybody has equal economic opportunity and can afford to live and exist. So that consent based casting style and conversation helps you to begin building those relationships and helps you to avoid type casting which really is the big problem is like you cannot know someone's fullness by looking at them and often you may not even know someone's actual gender identity by assuming from their appearance who they are. I'm gonna go to this question. This is probably gonna be our last question because it's 1103 and we are supposed to end at 1115. So question from Fuse Theater. I'm wondering if there would be a way for this alliance to offer smaller companies without resources to hire someone outright a workshop series to bolster efforts to be more inclusive and develop our perspectives on casting slash hiring TG and C artists. This might both create connections and move forward better inclusive practices for more companies. Ooh, ooh, ooh. So if you work with Theater Bay Area they're interested in doing this work. So reach out to them and affirm that this is work that you would like doing. We have collective organizations in the Bay like Fool's Fury. Thank you Fool's Fury. Hi, we're here that are creating these opportunities. And I think in that case if you're a small organization that doesn't have the funding how can you partner with other organizations that either do have the funding or other small organizations and like we're talking about bargaining power collectivize together to share the costs of those experiences and then to collaboratively reap the benefits. Like maybe you and I've seen this happen with other theater companies before maybe you and two other theater companies that you have partner relationships with or would like to have partner relationships with can all together hire one transcasting consultant to work on a season. And that is a trans person getting paid and three new companies that are building a relationship. Money is hard. Small organizations versus large organizations and like Kierma saying class and pay equity are things that we have to consider when doing this work. I personally would love to see a bunch of Bay Area theaters organized together and create a trans theater festival in which once every year or two years we tell trans stories from trans artists and work together to share all our resources. That is a tangible thing that I would love to create down the line. So if anybody's interested, let me know but these sorts of like collective actions are possible and you don't have to just work from within your organization we're a community and we can act as a community and use community resources. Yeah, I would also agree as just someone who formerly worked at Theater Bay Area look at Theater Bay Area look at intersection for the arts ask those people to host something for you. Ask it goes a long way and with demand there will be a supply. I promise you these organizations are craving for interactions from the community to tell them what they want in order to provide you with these resources. So again, really go into these areas. In theater, you could go to Theater Bay Area going to intersection for the arts for dancers go to dancers group, understand that they host workshops and they will hire people like us to do these workshops that you're asking for. So yeah. And I think- And this is also, these are, I'm so sorry Nikki. Go ahead. No, no, go. I mean, these, as we've said, we're still looking at what our next moves are after we finish the results of these surveys. So I mean, thank you for asking because that shows us there is a need for that maybe is something that we should try to offer. And I think I know who's on the other side is Fuse Theater Zoom. So I will probably reach out to you to see if you have any more specifics of what you would be looking for in terms of a workshop like that. So we can maybe put something together. We have, have we shared it all our email in the chat? And if not, can we do so? Yeah, we shared our, we've shared the TAC, our TAC email so you can reach out to that. Yep. And we are also on social media. If you search TAC Bay Area or TGNC Advocacy Collective in the Bay Area, you'll find us on those social media when we have time in our lives and are not preparing for this particular project, we will likely be more active on those places. But there are a variety of ways that you can reach out to us because like, like Kieran said, like if you ask us directly, we can also do our work better to try and make these things happen. And so we're grateful for the people that are watching that can now reach out to us and say, hey, we need this or hey, we're interested in this and can help us spread the word as well. Yes. 100%. We do have like a few more minutes and there is one like questions us statement. From Alisha. So yes, Fuse and Fulsferi would love to dig deeper into this question with ensembles and others doing devising work where all the artists, participants in the process will all opt in as generative slash co-creators, not just as actors. And I just wanted to like uplift that comment and like really show that like, we're not talking about just traditional types of theater, we're talking about traditional theater as well. And understanding like, that there has been cultures. Designed around like traditional productions as well as devising work. But we just need to break those cultures and understand that open transparency and being able to flow with creations and also understand people's boundaries and respects. And I think that's like the number one thing that we're trying to push as well as trying to create a way to communicate to organizations or theater groups to understand that some other culture, organizational culture is problematic. And how can we use that understanding to change for the better. And to change the culture as well as create policies to not only protect the organization, but also the people that they are hiring. So, yeah, just wanted to add that at the end. This is what we're doing and this is our work. And again, like everybody was saying, if you want to reach out to us, we're going to be putting an email there. If you want to fill out a form, like if you're a transgender nonconforming artist in the bay area, if you're having the individual testimony form in the chat, we also would love, if you were an organization that would love to fill out this form and haven't yet, please reach out to us and we could send you that form. Or if you have any other questions or ideas, we would love to hear them from you. So yeah, just want to say thank you. And glad that people made it. And we're able to listen to us. Because this is a really amazing journey. I want to say for everybody. And also like, I don't know, I feel very like thankful for this cohort in order to do this work that we're doing. I also want to shout out real quick that this is not our entire cohort. Lee, Ron and Davis is also of incredible, incredible theater maker, local, local TGNC theater maker and a member of our collective, but was just not able to be here today. Yeah. Wonderful. So next in the conference will be our lunch break. And we do have a little pop up session happening in session to learning about Afghanistan with seven ala day. You can access that by clicking on the sessions button at the top left of your screen and select join the lunch session for the day. And that will take you over there. It'll be about half an hour long. Thanks so much for joining us.